In the May 11 & 25 SN: High-tech cricket farming, AI learns from Minecraft, looking for lithium, a new hominid species is named, signs of life in dead pig brains, Cherokee cave texts decoded, water molecules on the moon and more.

Plants' reproductive weaponry unfurled

Botanical tricks include adhesion and bubbles to spread their spores

BOSTON — Plants appear to live the ultimate sedentary lifestyle, but they’ve got mad aeronautical skills when it comes to their progeny. Two new studies — one investigating the catapult action of ferns, and another examining the “jumping spores” of a species of horsetail — reveal surprising botanical mechanical tricks for dispersing future offspring.

Consider Equisetum’s jumping spores. Known as horsetail or scouring rush, Equisetum bears spores that are decked out with four slender, arm-like projections called elaters. Botanists have long presumed that the elaters, which are curled around the spore and unfu

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